Or implement permaculture, or face extinction!

I would very much appreciate if you could elaborate one thing, namely, what kind of nutritional assumptions is your 2-3% land use estimate based on?

By “nutritional assumptions” I mean – what kind of food, and how much, we actually need to produce if we are to stay healthy. Determining this is way more tricky than it might seem:

* Firstly, if we focus primarily on basic (physiological) nutritional needs, we ultimately need to consider about sixty or so micro- and macronutrients (actually there are more if we consider e.g. certain short chain saturated fatty acids as separate nutrients that should be obtained from food for optimum health) and tens of antinutrients, pollutants and contaminants present even in organic food.

* Secondly, all the nutrients need to be obtained in appropriate amounts and ratios – and often the problem is actually getting too much of a certain thing, which then creates a havoc in the body by e.g. messing up the endocrine system (e.g. too much or too little carbohydrates, or goitrogenic foods), or causing inflammation (e.g. fructose), or causing vitamin/mineral deficiency by increased consumption (e.g. foods containing too much fiber or lectins), or overburdening certain internal organs (e.g. too much sugars, or alcohol). And often it is not at all trivial to avoid because of low nutritional density of food..

* Thirdly, each of us has unique metabolism and unique needs. To give just a couple of examples; some people do fine with >300 grams of starch each day, others would get eventually sick from that amount and would therefore benefit from a more fat based diet. Most people – at least in western countries – would do well to reduce the ingestion of omega-6 fatty acids, which can have adverse effects on health if consumed in disproportionate amounts (easy to do), this also serves as an example of the second point above.

* Fourthly, most (if not all) healthy traditional populations have their food culture based on either starch or (mostly saturated) natural fats as the primary energy source. There are no healthy cultures (that I’m aware of) that are basing their diet primarily on sugars or polyunsaturated fats – this is why the farther from the equator one gets, the more animal-based diets tend to be – as the fatty acid profile of plants tends to shift from saturated to (poly)unsaturated.

So there is a lot of “nutritional diversity” to be taken into account – various physiological, cultural, genetic, ecological and geographical aspects – and so any attempt to create an unified nutritional model will likely result either in a mess, or a dysfunctional one-size-fits-all approach.

Nevertheless I feel strongly that it would be enormously important and useful – even for permaculture movement in general – to put a lot of thought into this very aspect – what we actually need to produce and how to do it in a way that is healthy both to the soil and to the people (keeping also in mind that a lot of scientific research – and also “official” recommendations – concerning “healthy” nutrition done during the past 50 years are at least somewhat influenced by the needs of the big agribusinesses, so it is not at all trivial to discern the “real truth” about the matter).

In a nutshell, I feel that the permacultural food production “model”, in order to be taken really seriously, would really benefit from sound nutritional assessments – taking into account diversity of opinions and needs, presenting the underlying assumptions transparently and openly, also acknowledging that those assumptions might be wrong.

So to get back to my original question, it would be really great if you could elaborate a bit the nutritional assumptions behind the 2-3% land use estimate that you mentioned in the article?

All the best,

The deforestation in the Amazones decreased with 49 % in June compared with last year, but with this proposed new law reform this will end, and the pretected status for enormous forest areas will be abandoned. Here is the new law reform in Portugeese: http://www.camara.gov.br/internet/sileg/Prop_Detalhe.asp?id=17338

If this reform get trough it will be a serious back slash for our planet, as if it was not bad enough with all the forest fires in Russia, we shall now again increase the deforestation in the Amazones.

I hope permaculture can use their recourses in South Amerika to enlighten people about this new law making deforestation legal in protected forests.